Page 8 of Fallen Heir
I’d been looking underSavannah Starlingfor months, following cold trails and locked files, but something never quite added up. No lease. No employment records under that nameanywhere in the States. Just whispers of her trust fund and that crash in Alabama. It was like she’d become a ghost.
But seeing her tonight… she was real. And she was inmycity.
Still unsettled, my fingers hovered over the keyboard. Then I typed in a variation I hadn’t considered—Savannah Sinclair.
One click. One breath.
And everything lit up.
There she was. A full paper trail, hiding in plain sight. Employment records at Millicent’s PR firm. A Manhattan lease—tucked neatly under a Westbrook Real Estate property.My property. Then the gut punch. A $5.6 million dollar transfer from her trust account to mine, logged over three months ago.
She’d been living in my building this whole damn time.
Twelve floors below me.
The Murray. Of course it wasThe Murray. She hadn’t just picked it at random—she’d picked it for protection. Discretion. Safety. And she’d found it. I designed that building myself—down to every security protocol and hand-selected guard stationed at its entrances. I’d built it for people like her, whether I knew it or not. People running from something.
And with one silent transaction, she’d bought herself a fortress. One even I would’ve chosen, if I needed to disappear.
A knock pulled me from the spiral of realization.
“Boss,” Ben, my head of security, leaned in. “Drew’s at the door. You want me to let him in?”
The last thing I needed tonight was Drew Townsend’s drama. But his circle had deep pockets, and as much as I didn’t want him here, I tolerated him—at least until he did something stupid.
“Let him in,” I said, voice sharp. “If he causes trouble, you can add him to the banned list here, too.”
I didn’t have time for this. I needed to make my appearance, keep the wolves fed and the image intact. Savannah was already sitting at the VIP booth with Millie, tucked in the corner but impossible to miss.
Everything in me tightened.
She looked out of place. Uncomfortable. But God, she was captivating. The kind of beauty that made people stop mid-sentence and look at her. I found myself standing in the shadows, watching her, like a man drowning and too ashamed to reach for air.
She didn’t do anything to draw attention, but I couldn’t look away. Every curve, every movement was unintentional poetry. She was all woman—plump in the way that begged to be touched, hips that swayed without effort, lips full and parted like she was holding back something dangerous. There was something about her presence that stirred something primal in me. I hadn’t even spoken to her, didn’t know the sound of her voice, but I was already pulled in. Like gravity. Like fate.
And then, she did something that almost knocked the breath from my lungs—she looked up. Straight at the mirrored ceiling. Straight at me.
It was impossible. She couldn’t see me. My office windows were double-mirrored, designed to conceal. But she didn’t just glance—shestared.Like shefeltme there. Like she knew I was watching her. Her eyes bored into the glass as if she were seeing right through it, right through me.
I stood frozen in place, rooted to the floor like a man who’d seen a ghost.
And then she got up.
Graceful. Composed. But I caught it—the faint tremor in her fingertips as she reached for her clutch. She weaved through the crowd, walking past the chaos like it didn’t exist. And for a second… I almost followed.
Almost.
A few minutes passed, each one dragging longer than the last. I scanned the crowd, worry inching up my spine. It wasn’t until I saw her step out of the women’s bathroom that I realized I’d been holding my breath.
I watched her hesitate, staring at the dance floor before turning around and sliding onto a stool at Nikki’s end of the bar.
Nic wasn’t just another employee—she was the brains behind some of my more… discreet operations. A tech genius. Security systems, digital cleanups—she handled the backend of my rescue missions and private sector jobs like a damn machine. And she never cracked under pressure. That’s what made her invaluable.
But Savannah?
Savannah was a puzzle I couldn’t solve. A mystery that made my mind race. The kind of woman you don’t just look at—you feel. And when that drunk idiot, Drew, slithered up beside her, something in me snapped.
I couldn’t just stand there and watch him breathe down her neck, leaning in like he owned the place—like she was something to corner. So, I did what I had to do. And took off down the stairs, two at a time.
